|
1780 |
David Landreth and family left
their home near the Scottish border to establish his seed
company in Montréal, Canada |
|
1781 |
Landreth
seed business started in Montréal, Canada |
|
1784 |
David decided Canada was too
cold for the nursery business so he left, settled in
Philadelphia, and named his company simply, David Landreth |
|
1789 |
David
Landreth was joined by his brother Cuthbert |
|
1790 |
Company name
changed to David & Cuthbert Landreth |
|
1798 |
Landreth’s
introduced the Zinnia from Mexico |
|
1808 |
The Osage
orange growing along the Osage River was found by the
Lewis and Clark expedition and sent to the Landreth
Nurseries |
|
1810 |
Landreth
Farm used the first horse tread machine, which was invented by a
man named Robinson in order to drive grain and seed through
threshers |
|
1811 |
Landreth
introduced the first white potato in the United States. All the
potatoes before this had a slight, yellowish tinge |
|
1818 |
David Landreth 2nd was sent
to Charleston, South Carolina in order to establish a branch
there |
|
1820 |
The first
tomatoes were brought into the country and later the first
variety of yellow tomatoes were perfected |
|
1822 |
Landreth’s
Extra Early Pea was introduced |
|
1826 |
A new type
of spinach was introduced by Landreth’s, which eventually
developed into
Bloomsdale Spinach |
|
1828 |
David Landreth and
David the 2nd were among
the founders of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Both
were officers for eight years.
David Landreth II also belonged to the Philadelphia Society
for Promoting Agriculture and served as its president twice
|
|
1830 |
Company
named changed to David Landreth & Co. |
|
1832 |
David Landreth was the first
person to publish the first floral and horticultural magazine in
Pennsylvania |
|
1835 |
David Landreth Jr. became
President of the United States Agricultural Society (remained
for several years) |
|
1843 |
Company
became known as David Landreth & D. Landreth Munns |
|
1845 |
Company name
changed back to David Landreth |
|
1847 |
Landreth’s
farm moved from Philadelphia to
Bloomsdale
Farms in Bristol, Bucks County, Pa. |
|
1852 |
Landreth’s
gave Commodore Perry thousands of pounds of American vegetable
seeds to take with him on his expedition to Japan. When Perry
returned to the United States from Japan, he brought the first
Japanese shrubs and plants ever imported into this country to
the Landreth Nurseries |
|
1853 |
Landreth’s
established a machine shop in Bristol for making mowing
machines, reapers, plows and corn shellers that were shipped all
across the U.S. |
|
1860 |
Decided to
change company name to David Landreth & Son |
|
1862 |
Burnet
Landreth commissioned as captain in Philadelphia City Militia
Regiment |
|
1865 |
Purchased
Reedland Farm in New Jersey, which is just above Burlington to
raise peppers, watermelons, cantaloupes, squash and onion sets |
|
1868 |
Purchased a
5,000+ acre plantation on the Rappahannock River in Virginia to
grow turnips, rutabaga, cabbage, etc. |
|
1872 |
Landreth’s
was the first to develop a steam-powered tractor for plowing in
Pennsylvania |
|
1875 |
Name changed
to David Landreth & Sons |
|
1876 |
Captain
Burnet Landreth served as Chief of the Bureau of Agriculture of
the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia |
|
1880 |
David Landreth II passes away and reins are passed to
Burnet and
brothers |
|
1885 |
William
Linton Landreth, second son of
Oliver,
entered business and continued until he retired in 1902 |
|
1887 |
Captain
Burnet
Landreth served as Vice President of the American Exhibition in
London |
|
1890 |
Company's
partners were now
Oliver,
Burnet and
Leopold
Landreth |
|
1897 |
Captain
Burnet Landreth became president of the company. According to
Green (1938), Burnett was called "the dean of American seed
growers" and was decorated three times by the French government
for his work in agriculture |
|
1903 |
Company
changed its name to D. Landreth Seed Company and
incorporated with Burnet as the president in 1904 |
|
1904 |
Burnett
Landreth Jr. and
Symington
Phillips Landreth (d.1931) became partners |
|
1906 |
David
Landreth the 4th joined the partnership |
|
1942 |
The D.
Landreth Seed Company was sold to the Supplee-Biddle
Hardware Co. in Philadelphia, which later was sold to the
Robert Buist Seed Co. Ownership
eventually passed to the Goldberg family and the company was
moved to Baltimore, Maryland where it was operated under the
Landreth Seed Company name as an East Coast packet seed
wholesaler into the late 1990s. |
|
2003 |
From a
letter sent out to past customers, the D. Landreth Seed Company name was
purchased by
Peter and
Barbara Plantholt Melera, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology
and a venture capitalist, respectively. They have resurrected the name as a mail order seed company
and marketing as the "Oldest Seed House in America."
500 catalogs distributed.(15) |
|
2004 |
2,500 catalogs distributed.(15)
Launches a web site in February.
(16) |
|
2005 |
According to an interview in the
Baltimore Business Journal, at the time of purchase, revenues
hovered around $250,000. As of the article date, Melera said sales
reached $500,000. According to
Melera, even at a $500K sales level, the company still wasn't turning a
profit. To date, she was feeding the company with her own money, a loan
from Sun Trust and a small loan from the Baltimore Development
Corporation.
Jeffrey P. Pillas, CFO for the
Baltimore Development Corp., said the BDC gladly gave the company a
$40,000, five-year loan at a 5 percent interest rate. "Good
management, nice lady who has a lot of business experience," Pillas
said. "In my view, it’s well worth the risk."
The company has five employees and she
plans to add more. "I would like for the company not to be gigantic,"
she said. "But I would like to be a substantial presence in the
Baltimore area as a blue-collar manufacturing house."
Web site accounts for 23 to 30% of the
business.(16)
10,000 catalogs distributed.(15)
Expecting to increase distribution to 25,000 catalogs in 2006.(14) |
|
2006 |
Although part of the original statements
were a desire to become a "substantial Baltimore area as a blue-collar
manufacturing house," in the Spring of 2006 the company moves to New
Freedom, PA.(18) |
